The woman also sat down, but not as if for ease. She drew one of the big cheap albums towards her, and began vigorously searching in it from the beginning, as if it were a book of strange characters in which she wished to find a particular passage. She fixed her eyes upon each small cheap photograph in turn, as if trying hard to remember who it represented, and whether it was, or was not, the one she wanted. Caius looked on amazed.
At length, about the middle of the book, she came to a portrait at which she stopped, and with a look of cunning took out another which was hidden under it, and thrust it at Caius.
"It's for you," she said; "it's mine, and I'm going to die, and it's you I'll give it to."
She looked and spoke as if the proffered gift was a thing more precious than the rarest gem.
Caius took it, and saw that it was a picture of a baby girl, about three years old. He had not the slightest doubt who the child was; he stood by the window and examined it long and eagerly. The sun, unaided by the deceptive shading of the more skilled photographer, had imprinted the little face clearly. Caius saw the curls, and the big sad eyes with their long lashes, and all the baby features and limbs, his memory aiding to make the portrait perfect. His eager look was for the purpose of discovering whether or not his imagination had played him false; but it was true what he had thought—the little one was like Josephine.
"I shall be glad to have it," he said—"very glad."
"I had it taken at Montrose," said the poor mother; and, strange to say, she said it in a commonplace way, just as any woman might speak of procuring her child's likeness. "Day, he was angry; he said it was waste of money; that's why I give it to you." A fierce cunning look flitted again across her face for a moment. "Don't let him see it," she whispered. "Day, he is a bad father; he don't care for the children or me. That's why I've put her in the water."
She made this last statement concerning her husband and child with a nonchalant air, like one too much accustomed to the facts to be distressed at them.
For a few minutes it seemed that she relapsed into a state of dulness, neither thought nor feeling stirring within her. Caius, supposing that she had nothing more to say, still watched her intently, because the evidences of disease were interesting to him. When he least expected it, she awoke again into eagerness; she put her elbows on the table and leaned towards him.
"There's something I want you to do," she whispered. "I can't do it any more. I'm dying. Since I began dying, I can't get into the water to look for her. My baby is in the water, you know; I put her in. She isn't dead, but she's there, only I can't find her. Day told me that once you got into the water to look for her too, but you gave it up too easy, and no one else has ever so much as got in to help me find her."